Hollow Earth

As I've been reading Mark Fisher's quite excellent "Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?" I have been questioning my own ability to come up with any kind of meaningful contribution or insight into Mark's arguments. This is, after all, a book about which none other than Slavoj Žižek comments: "...is simply the best diagnosis of our predicament that we have!" What can one do but gawp!

The earliest coalescence of the blogosphere had as its vital component the theoretical skill of the likes of Nina Gold, Owen Hatherley and Alex Williams. In some senses these were people Mark brought with him to the table. Between Jan 2003 and May 2006 there was a magical period when this contingent was happy to be at one with people like myself who's interests were often less ostensibly serious, or technically erudite, but who were nevertheless passionately committed to other things: creativity, geographical community, DIY-attitude, art and music production etc. In a way it reminded me (faintly) of that memorable period of pre-Stalinist Soviet Russia when Lissitzky, Tatlin and Vertov were bedfellows with Lenin and Trotsky. There is no obvious axis as such these days and it's a pity.

Dissensus was essentially a misguided attempt of mine to foster this collusion, to in some way paper over the cracks which were obviously forming. Mark broadly supports the remarks of film-maker Adam Curtis in his chapter "Marxist Suppernanny" which presumably he would apply to the forum Dissensus, that the internet "facilitates communities of solipsists, interpassive networks of like-minds who confirm, rather than challenge each others' assumptions and prejudices." Reading this, his own parting shot to Dissensus rang out loud in my memory. He did, to some degree have a point, but the sad irony was that in withdrawing in that manner he removed the "difficulty" that he represented to some of the posters there. It would have been more consistent to have continued posting - remaining a thorn-in-the-side to the apocryphal Pot-smoking, Teletubby-endorsing Dads. Me, I love Dissensus. It is full of interesting and unusual people, and I certainly don't think there is cause to be ashamed of it.

It goes without saying that I regret the schism greatly. I think the likes of myself (if one is allowed to make such generalisations...) benefit more from the input of the likes of Mark than vice-versa. However, I would say that if it isn't careful the Socialist "network" is in danger of talking only to itself in ciphered tones, of getting lost in the esoteric blind-alleys of theory and culture. Just to be abundantly clear though, this is not a criticism I would level at Mark, especially in the light of the generous transparency of thought in this book and in Mark's insistence in dissecting not his peer's papers or the terminally obscure artifacts of Modernist Gardening, but Kafka, Wall-E, The Bourne films, Live-8, Nirvana and Children of Men.

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I hope Mark won't mind me taking the risky step of attempting to summarise what he is talking about when he uses the term "Capitalist Realism"? "Capitalist Realism" is at once the assumption that there is no alternative to Capitalism as well as the simultaneous, pervasive shoe-horning of the tropes of Capitalism into all other areas of our lives. Mark would take issue with that expression that we find at at every turn: "It's just a business decision", just as he bemoans the total unsuitability of business models as they are applied to to Health and (especially) Education. One of my favourite parts of the book comes when he relishes describing the new wave of management in Education's inability to resolve whether students are customers or clients...

I've been familiar with Mark's arguments about the state of Post-Fordist economics since he first outlined them to me before an Ariel Pink concert. He argues, convincingly using the theory of Marxist economist Christian Marazzi, that when the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 20 points on October 6th 1979, a shift was made to the Post-Fordist industrial climate and employment was increasingly out-sourced. Mark argues that, although we played into the hands of corporations by acting with delight as we were freed from the drudgery and tedium of being attached to one job for our whole life, we were essentially diddled.

As someone who has worked as a Freelancer for 14 years this is something I think about a great deal. Reading Marshall Berman's "All That Is Solid Melts into Air" was an experience which has greatly sustained me throughout this period. Mark cites the text on a number of occasions but I feel it is important to emphasise that, in the course of a grand historical overview, Berman actually celebrates the collapse of feudalism and our entry into the Modern condition of endless flux and mutability. He does perhaps view it as, perhaps the lesser of two evils, but certainly the preference is there.

Mark is not afraid to draw on his own personal experience in education and so I feel at liberty to do the same. I've only very occasionally come across the metaphorical "Nanny" in terms of employment. The first was a very prestigious Film Production Company which offered, in exchange for a period of extremely hard Full-time work, a notional position as "most-favoured Freelancer" - the duration of which presumably would have lasted as long as the current crop of in-house Producers were in circulation. Hardly a golden hand-shake! The other was witnessing up close as a Freelancer the workings of an extremely rich Multi-national corporation where the Full-time employees seemed very well-nurtured and supported.

Ultimately in both instances it seemed like a reasonably good thing; one divorced by a huge gulf from the (albeit successful) precarity of my own working life. Though in fairness what separates me from the full brutality of Freelance life, for which, as I struggle to preserve it for my own children I no longer apologise for, is a small cushion of family wealth. Mark is perhaps understandably more ambivalent about Post-Fordist economics and the worth of "the so-called Nanny state". But actually his observations are inflected by affection for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Radiophonic Workshop - for a vision of the Nanny state which fosters an intellectual self-improvement in people and, to again quote Mark quoting Adam Smith, "take people beyond the limits of their own self".

Although it is not necessarily central to his thesis, Mark touches upon music a number of times in the book. With Simon's recent piece on Hip-Hop in the 00s and Stubbs' on Pop in the same decade we are faced with alarming consensus about the decline in the "quality" (viscerally, intellectuality) of music. Actually their targets are different in that Stubbs celebrates the lacunae of non-mainstream music in comparison to the collapse of Pop, while Reynolds aims squarely for the head of Hip-Hop. When Fisher talks about music it is with a much more general and withering perspective. Put with excessive blunt force (that he might shy away from): Nearly all music is shit today and the reason is Capitalism.

The first thing I do when faced with this assertion is flail around helplessly - huffing and puffing. Is this not fogey-ism run rampant? With the perspective of time will we not come to view today's great music with the same respect of that of the past? Truthfully I am not so sure. I have invested as much time and energy, maybe more, this decade as I did in Music in the 80s and 90s and there's no getting away from it, Music doesn't matter any more. I've had my own theories, whether it was something "Natural" to do with formats and one's aural engagement with sound (Analogue_vs_Digital), whether it was owing to methods of "consumption" (Private_vs_Social), whether it was a result of the collapse of the physical medium (Artwork_vs_no Artwork) or even whether it was down to the interface of musical instruments (No Computers_vs_Computers). However, at the end of the day Mark is much closer to nailing the problem, it's Capitalism's fault - it truly is.

At the ice-rink the other day and we* were all skating to the sounds of 09 Hip-Hop, R'n'B, Dancehall and Grime - a cocktail which even earlier in the decade (I dunno maybe 2004) would have floated my boat - but it all sounded so dead-eyed. So utterly pointless! I asked myself, why? WHY?!?!? The reason I came back with was because the people making this music, and obviously I'm not just talking about Urban, had no reason to be making it all beyond some reflexive social trigger AND when they did they're immediately locked into replicating Capitalist Realism - the dream from which we are unable to create memories. You pick up the phone, and the person on the other end is silent.

People used to make music because they wanted to touch the stars, stick it to the man, tear up the place, chant down Babylon, explore new possibilities**, or to lose themselves in Dionysian abandon on the dancefloor. Now they do it to be a "big man" or "a famous person" or "rich" or - and this is the most pervasive and specious example of Capitalist Realism with regards to music- "a career". Don't think I'm offering myself up as some kind of Musical messiah for a second though!!! Guffaws. I'm just some cranky middle-aged bloke toiling away in obscurity for the pleasure of it. But ask yourself. Did any of the musicians we admire set out with the intention of having "a career"?

There are lots of very good records being made still but I don't pretend to myself they are the equal of their forebears. They are small records. The "non-mainstream" has been afflicted with its own strain of Capitalist Realism. The extremely unhealthy embrace of business concepts like "the long tail" and "narrow-casting" has wiped out the underground's ability to communicate universally, fostering as it does self-serving enclaves ever decreasing in scale. We might not sell shed-loads of records - but we know what our market is! So many small label bosses now view themselves with a certain amount "professional" pride as respectable small businessmen. As a pseudo journalist I find myself inundated by PR spam****. What's wrong with being comfortable with terminal obscurity, with being honest to one's parents that one's vision might be a little skewed to the stars? All this managerial bullshit makes not a whit of difference at the end of the day anyway.....

Yet "Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?" does set out some constructive arguments for ways in which we might proceed. The bureaucracy which Capitalism promised to rid us of must be curtailed, we must learn to live more austerely and we should aspire to intellectual self-improvement**. And actually, I think this all sounds like a good starting place.

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*To my great surprise Mark was very good on the family- on how Capitalism crushes communities around it, places it under terrible stresses (both parents needing to work) but at once relies on it.

**Oh how the Avant-garde became lost!

***Mark is a bit critical of exercise and better diet as a tactic to combat Capitalism- I suppose because one just trains oneself to jump through its hoops better- to become a more efficient, less breakable (and for this read less susceptible to mental illness) "cog".

****The next time you set about about writing a PR letter to a magazine think instead how much more entertaining it would be to race mice or roll naked in Thames mud.